Regarding the proposed RAND patents

In the past the global internet community has relied upon your organization for reliable free 
language standards such as html. Web developers, companies, and users have greatly benefited 
from these open standards and they have greatly enhanced the functionality of the Web. I 
believe your proposal on RAND patents would destroy the relevance of the World Wide Web 
Consortium (W3C), and would seriously damage the progress of the World Wide Web itself. 

In order to avoid this dangerous course, I believe W3C should require that the standards it 
endorses be available for licence free of charge and without restrictions to any individual or 
organization. Anything less than a clear policy to this effect will certainly result in the splintering of 
the World Wide Web language standards and/or its takeover by one or more private companies. 
Not only would the public be subjected to a more confusing and less usefull internet experience, 
but the WC3's influence over internet standards that are actually used will be signifigantly 
reduced. In short this move will almost certainly lead to the end of your organization and will 
negativly impact the growth of the internet which has been one of your primary goals.

I hope you will be able to give my comments and the comments of my many peers who will be 
writing to you serious consideration. 

Sincerely yours, 
Brian Conner

Received on Tuesday, 2 October 2001 14:31:34 UTC